


I Still See You (With The Eyes Of A Child)

by cryptidwintersoldier



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: And Richie isn't doing well with it, Drinking, Five Stages of Grief, Grieving, M/M, Not a Fix It- Eddie is still Dead, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide, will update tags as I post more chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-02-01 04:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21372289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidwintersoldier/pseuds/cryptidwintersoldier
Summary: Comedian Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier was found dead in his apartment after complaints to the landlord about loud music blaring from his apartment. He was unmarried, and left behind no children, partner, or pets.With no show, talk-show appearance, or even tweet to come out of the comedian in months, fans were worried following the comedian’s last show during which he had to be removed from the stage.--It’s only a few months earlier that Richie finishes driving home from Derry, Maine. It’s the same apartment he always comes home to: small, but bigger than most other apartments in Chicago. It’s not like he needs all the extra room, though when he was looking at apartments, the larger space and the open floor plan felt like the kind of thing an adult his age should have. Before going back to Derry, he kept meaning to look into downsizing. He thinks now might be the time to actually start working on that.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	1. You Turned Me On To The Idea Of Growing Old

**Author's Note:**

> i am so... so sorry about this fic, only a little though
> 
> This chapter was beta'd by hyrude on tumblr! go follow her!
> 
> song for this chapter is the idea of growing old by the features!
> 
> Also! This fic was inspired by a series of tiktoks made by apextea on tiktok, her fem richie is really good and you should look at her stuff!

The headline reads like this:  **Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier found dead in apartment, cause of death still undetermined.**

Three days later, a no-name journalist updates the article:

Comedian Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier was found dead in his apartment after complaints to the landlord about loud music blaring from his apartment. He was unmarried, and left behind no children, partner, or pets. 

With no show, talk-show appearance, or even tweet to come out of the comedian in months, fans were worried following the comedian’s last show during which he had to be removed from the stage due to an outburst. 

Though the media is still waiting on an autopsy, police believe that Tozier died of self-inflicted cuts to his wrists while in a bath. He left a note, but at this juncture, that will not be made available to the public. If you or someone you love is struggling with suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at  1-800-273-8255.

The comedian’s fan base has been quieting down on social media after Tozier’s latest-- and final-- performance that included an on-stage breakdown that resulted in the comedian being guided off of the stage. 

More coverage on Tozier can be found  here and be sure to check out his final special: Not Joking., available on Netflix. 


	2. I can fit two people under my skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was also beta'd by hyrude on tumblr!  
Song for the chapter is under my skin by jukebox the ghost

It’s only a few months earlier that Richie finishes driving home from Derry, Maine. It’s the same apartment he always comes home to: small, but bigger than most other apartments in Chicago. It’s not like he needs all the extra room, though when he was looking at apartments, the larger space and the open floor plan felt like the kind of thing an adult his age should have. Before going back to Derry, he kept meaning to look into downsizing. He thinks now might be the time to actually start working on that. 

The door doesn’t close behind him, still propped open by the heavy suitcase behind him. He drags it in, finally letting the door close. His bag is only big enough to hold a few changes of clothes and a toothbrush; Eddie’s are big enough to haul around boulders, and, considering their weight, Richie wonders if that’s all they’re full of. 

The second of Eddie’s bags is still in Richie’s car, and he goes down to retrieve it with a swift urgency, as if there is a necessity to have them both in his apartment now, lest the objects in them are suddenly needed. Somewhere, he knows that there’s no pressing need to bring any of Eddie’s things inside yet. If he really wanted to, he could leave them all in his car for months and it wouldn’t make any difference. But he convinces himself, somewhere in his head, that if they aren’t in his home as soon as humanly possible, they run the risk of disappearing into thin air like they never existed at all. 

Once the second suitcase is in, placed against the wall next to the first one, topped with Eddie’s impressively large toiletry bag, Richie finally lets himself collapse on the couch. He hadn’t realized how tired he was or even how long he had been tired. The car ride might as well have not happened. Richie spent most of it zoning out anyways, his thoughts nowhere in particular, just thinking about one thing. 

_ Eddie.  _

By the end of the drive, anyone driving past him might have mistaken him for talking on the phone with how animated he looked. He was, for a majority of the second half of the drive, engaged in a one-sided reminiscence of his childhood with Eddie. 

The couch catches him when he lets himself collapse. In his exhaustion, he reaches for a pillow, wrapping his arms around it close. For the first time since Derry, he lets himself cry. 

He wakes up a few hours later to a dark room, still groggy and not truly out of sleep. For a moment, he does contemplate getting up and dragging himself to his bed, but he’s dehydrated and can feel his eyes swollen. His glasses have been long lost in the folds of the couch or on the floor. He rolls back over, pulling the small, often unused throw blanket off of the corner of the couch over him, curling under it so his feet were hardly sticking out.

He wasn’t even sure what his living room was for anymore. He had paid good money for an interior designer, yet no one ever came by anyways. Of course it was another necessity fulfilled because it was a good look for an up-and-coming comedian to have a well-furnished apartment. What if Vogue wanted him to do an in-home 32 questions video? He couldn’t just say no on account of the mismatched dumpster couches that had originally flanked either side of the room.

No one ever used those, either. 

Eddie would have probably hated those couches. 

When Richie wakes up for a second time, it’s morning for real, and the light flooding the room forces him awake. There’s a clock on the end table, placed there with the knowledge that Richie is always late, no matter how many clocks he has surrounding him. It turns out that it’s actually three in the afternoon, meaning he’s effectively slept through the entire day, and, as he predicted, his phone is flooded by calls from his agent. 

As if on queue, his phone lights up with another call, which he picks up after a few rings, contemplating if it’s even worth it to talk to him at this point.

“Trashmouth speaking, your call is--”

“You got back to town yesterday. You were supposed to call, you were supposed to be on a plane to New York two hours ago.” 

Richie’s face goes white. “I overslept.”

“Yeah, I got that. You were supposed to be asleep on a flight to New York. To be on Colbert.  _ Colbert,  _ Richie, you heard of him before?”

“Yeah, dickhead, I know. I just-- I can’t go to New York right now, ok?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No I--”

“Because this sounds like a bad joke, Richie, I don’t have time for that.”

“I can’t go to New York, Alec, we can reschedule or--”

“Yeah, like Stephen Colbert just has constant availability.”

“It doesn’t have to be with--”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure Seth Myers is available whenever you’re ready.”

“Hey-- there’s an idea,” Richie tries to joke in an attempt to lighten the mood. 

“Richie. What the hell could have happened in your hometown-- that you didn’t give two dicks about until a few weeks ago-- that’s keeping you from going on  _ Colbert _ ?” He stresses the name like it’s the most important thing ever. Richie can think of at least one person more important. 

Which leads him to: how do you explain to someone who’s never met a hell-clown before, let alone had to fight one before his balls dropped, that the only person you ever really loved was killed on top of you in ancient fucking sewers buried under your hometown?

Richie wracks his brain for a second, and then settles on:

“I went back for a funeral.”

It’s a lie, but it’s a lie that works, so he rolls with it. 

“Jesus christ, Rich-- you didn’t say anything about--” Alec lets out an exasperated sigh. 

“Yeah I just-- didn’t think it was a big deal, you know? It was just… more than I bargained for.”

“Yeah, no, of course,” he curses to himself under his breath. “Let’s wait a week and see where we’re at-- don’t worry about the show-- just, we’ll figure something out, ok? We’ll figure something out.”

“We’ll figure something out,” Richie repeats back to him, his voice sounding distant. 

“Take care of yourself, yeah?”

“Yeah-- sure, thanks, Alec,”

He hangs up the phone before giving him a chance to respond. 

He feels the slightest bit better having taken care of that, but tries not to let it make him feel justified to take the rest of the day-- or what little is left of it-- off. The drive home was nearly twenty hours and involved two stops in less than clean motels. He had every right to be exhausted, but also hadn’t had a meal since being in Derry, choosing to eat snacks on the drive home that looked more like a two year old had been let loose in a gas station rather than an adult who really, really should be watching his diet. 

“Well,” he bargains to himself, standing up and walking to the kitchen, opening a cabinet and perusing its contents. “In theory-- I don’t really have anything to do.” He grabs an all but scraped down jar of peanut butter from the back of the top shelf, turning to look in the fridge. 

“The new show-- fucking  _ new show _ \-- is fucking written and people are gonna laugh and, and-- you would have hated it, Eds, I mean really just, you would have--” When he turns to shut the fridge door behind him, he realize Eddie  _ isn’t _ there. No one is. He stifles for a moment, holding the jelly and bread loosely in his hand, looking down at them and then back at the room. No one-- no one but him. 

“Well,” he laughs out loud, but sounds more angry than amused by his display. “Richie Tozier-- finally  _ fucking  _ losing it.” He begins trying to get out whatever he can from the peanut butter jar, which he realizes is more toast crumbs than actual peanut butter, but he makes do, getting as much as he can and slathering it on the toast. 

He hears Ben’s voice in the back of his head:

_ Eddie would have hated this.  _

Like that, guilt washes over him, and as if it couldn’t get worse, when he looks up from the poor excuse of a sandwich he had started making, his eyes almost instantly lock on Eddie’s bags still waiting by the door. He had been rude to not carry them up-- Eds can hardly take one of them at a time and-- he stops. 

He looks back down at the sandwich, balling the bread up in his fists, squeezing it until his knuckles are white, throwing the mess into the trash and slamming it shut before he can think on it any harder. 

“Jesus fuck-- Eds, I,” he wants to crumple down to the floor but forces himself to stand, stabling himself with his hands braced on the counter, head leaned against the cabinet. 

_ Eddie would have hated this. Eddie would have hated this. Eddie would have hated you.  _

He hears it over and over again like a mantra-- he’s not usually this messy, he tries to convince himself. He usually has his shit together, he wants to say, he still doesn’t know how to cook very well but god he would try.  _ Eds, I can try.  _

Maybe the waters in the barrens wasn’t the only thing Ben was right about Eddie hating.Maybe if Richie had somehow, someway, convinced Eddie to come back with him, it wouldn’t have lasted at all because what about Richie would be so appealing to a man who wore Gucci loafers and who actually took care of himself. 

Richie realizes how disgusting he must smell-- sweating from the hot car ride, undoubtedly crawling with bugs from the motel, and his hair slick enough to look like he had showered. 

_ Fucking Gucci loafers _ , he thinks. 

His hands are covered in bread crumbs and peanut butter-- disgusting, he thinks, frowning as he turns on the sink to let the running water wash off the evidence of the sandwich. He’s a grown man, he should be able to cook more than a sandwich. 

So he tries to. 

It takes a while, but he’s able to scrounge together a jar of pasta sauce-- the fancy kind in a glass bottle-- along with the composite remnants of a few boxes of pasta that have mostly been used for chili mac. He tries to justify the lack of fresh vegetables or any perishable ingredients at all with the fact that he had just spent months on the road doing a tour before heading to Derry-- but he had been in Chicago for long enough to at least go to the grocery store for the necessities. 

The sight is more upsetting than he wants it to be-- a grown man, hunched over a pot he had taken from his parents when he was helping them clean out when they packed up and moved to Florida, hardly knowing how long to cook the damn thing for . He really should give his parents a call. 

The sauce is easier than the pasta-- he dumps enough of it for a single serving in a smaller pot that was also taken from his parents, leaving it to heat up until it was edible. 

By the end, the pasta is overcooked and mushy, and the sauce is burned at the bottom, but the meal is salvageable. He grabs two plates, staring down at them on the counter for a few seconds, side by side. Eddie didn’t seem like the type to eat pasta that often-- but it was all Richie had, and Eddie could take a break from his overly health conscious ways to indulge in some of Richie’s pasta-- shitty as it may be. 

He plates it up, splitting it as equally as he can, and sets the two plates across from each other on the seldom-used kitchen table. Really,  _ really,  _ seldom used. When he’s not wining and dining in the name of meeting connections or surviving off of bar food before and after shows or on the generous,  _ free,  _ snack tables when he does shows, the meals he eats at home are typically eaten on the couch. 

Eddie deserves better, though. 

He sits down in front of his plate, fork in hand he begins to pick at the pasta, but gives up after a while, too focused on how  _ bad _ he knows it is to enjoy it. His elbows fall on the table and he cradles his head in his hands, shaking with embarrassment, breath hitching as he tries not to cry. He doesn’t want to cry. Not in front of Eddie. Not like this. 

Standing up, he pushes his chair in sloppily, making the table shake. He opens the liquor cabinet-- the only one that he every pays any mind to keep stocked. There’s a bottle of red wine buried at the back, saved for a special occasion that never came. Now is a good of a time as any, he decides, already working on getting the cork out.

“You want any, Eds?” He asks, not turning around. He knows that Eddie isn’t there. He’ll deal with that in the morning, he decides. It’s easier to pretend he’s there and that the future he had imagined for them would play out. 

“It’s a good one-- you’ll like it,” he sets the opened bottle onto the table with two glasses, throwing some probably-stale Italian bread that he had dug out of the fridge, originally meant for sandwiches, but it seemed like a good addition to the spaghetti dinner. 

“Hey-- Spageddie, get it, we’re having  _ spaghetti-- _ ” he tries to crack a joke, laughing in what comes out as more of a wheeze than anything. 

Once he beings pouring wine, he can’t stop. He sits at the table, his plate all but forgotten as he downs his glass. The initial rush feels good-- like the first night in Derry. Remembering the losers, remembering Eddie, and even remembering the God forsaken town he grew up in. He has been loose that night, a product of the overcompensation he’d done when he’d first seen Eddie, when he’d first locked eyes with the motherfucker and he flashed him that stupid half smile-- he looked just like he did when they were kids. 

He pours another, and another, taking a break between them to have a mouthful of the half-cold sandwich bread. The taste of the wine-soaked bread reminded him of when his parents had dragged him to the Catholic church during one of their endeavors to remain consistent to one religion. Richie had always preferred Synagogue, but he attributes that to the fact that Stan had been there more than anything.   
Stan, he thinks. Where had he been when Eddie…?

And that hits him harder than it did at the restaurant when he was still clouded with fear. 

Now there is only grief, and the wine shouldn’t burn on the way down but it does, and before he knows it, he’s walking back to the liquor cabinet and taking shots out of a bottle of honey whiskey his publicist had gotten him as congratulations, or condolences, or something---

Later, when he’s fed up with looking at his stupid dinner and his stupid cooking in his stupid kitchen, crying about Stan and Eddie, making a complete embarassment of himself, he finds the drive to drag Eddie’s bags to the bedroom. And they sit there, stupid-looking and staring him in the face. He has yet to breach the zipper on any of the bags, and now it seems almost sacrilegious to do so-- but he’s desperate and beyond trying to preserve the meticulous order Eddie had packed his things in. 

He began unzipping one of the suitcases, ready to rummage through it. If Eddie was mad at him tomorrow, he would help him clean things up while they moved his clothes into the drawer Richie had already mentally assigned to him. 

It doesn’t take Richie very long to find what he wants; Eddie is slender and a men’s medium, and the shirt Richie is holding, rubbing his fingers across, and inhaling every breath through, is soft and smells like the cologne Richie caught whiffs of when he was close enough to him. He’d fluffed up the neat and compactly organized shirts a considerable amount, but the mess is forgotten when Richie pulls himself onto the bed, shucking off his pants and crawling under the covers, the shirt still tightly-grasped in one of his hands. 

He cries into it, finally. His back rounds and he curls in on himself, smaller and smaller until there is no space between him and Eddie. He hates himself for getting his tears all over Eddie’s shirt, but he’ll understand, he knows he will, he’s sure of it. Every breath he takes is labored and his chest is aching in pain, every emotion he’s had since Derry coming out of him in a heavy flood, and he is wracked with each sob. 

“Yo-you’re not really gone,” his knuckles turn white from his grip, “you  _ can’t _ be.” Through tears, the words sound pained and hardly understandable.

The rest of the night goes like that until he’s too exhausted to stay awake anymore, the limp shirt held tightly in his arms like it possessed some kind of magic that would bring Eddie back for just that night. Richie lets himself believe it does. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry :,) please comment and kudos! i can be found on tumblr as jewishstozier

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please comment and kudos! I can be found on tumblr at jewishstozier


End file.
